That late summer night when Johnny was returning
from his last class in world literature from a college in mid-Manhattan,
which was once an armory were the "Fighting Sixty-ninth" came out of led
by Jimmy, "Hell's Kitchen" where Johnny had interned as a social worker
playing pool with guys who would become The Westies killing as easily as
made mob guys some of whom came from the East Bronx where Johnny was born
coming in on a crash landing the day before Christ was born, Cagney who
at first was afraid of dying but then proceeded to win the first world
war all by himself, discussing writers like Conrad, Joyce, Hardy, Pirandello
....

Johnny had all ready earned a degree at Harlem college
where Jonas Salk, Eddie G. Robinson and a future Secretary of State "Black
American" guy who would never become an American Black had graduated from
and the Rot training in Lewis Stadium guy would go along with the killing
of innocent children, forgetting he had grown up in the South Bronx helped
along by Jewish market owners who truly believed in giving a bright Shwarts
kid a chance in life but he chose to join those harboring inner weapons
of mass destruction deep inside themselves to gain a world domination.

Johnny could have been killed in East New York by three
Black guys who thought he had sideswiped them; never realizing he had avoided
a crash by going around the driver - onto the sidewalk and just avoiding
a pole - who was signaling one way and then going another and only for
the fact that Johnny had learned to fight by the age of four in The East
Bronx and tossed in against bigger and older kids from "aroun the cawna"
by his older so-called brother Leny One N who resented the little blond
curly-haired kid becoming their father's favorite - able to win large amounts
of moneys from watching people getting five to one odds; among whom
was a guy named Julius Garfinkle who had been sent up to The Bronx from
Brooklyn by loving relatives who were trying to save "the little bum" from
sitting in an electric chair up the river in Sing Sing and was helped by
a principal named Angelo Petri to lose his stammer to finally become the
actor John, "Everybody Dies", Garfield and a Tami Mauriello was another
watcher from Arthur Avenue who would fight the great Joe Louis in The House
That Ruth Built and even staggered the man who became a "good niggero"
after defeating the "Nazi" Schmeling; giving half the nation that wasn't
rooting for the Furrier a belief they also could beat the mighty German
war machine and then he became a "nigger" again after the IRS hounded him
down for moneys he owed the government - a government that could make its
own money like Lincoln did and not have to borrow from banks paying
huge interest rates to them in its Barnum world of suckers - that
his handlers had stolen who could not believe the smiling good looking
Johnny could fight so well while using Leny's trick of fighting southpaw
and learn he did with the impressions of Leny's red blotched hand-prints
all over his face until he memorized the skill of jabbing with his right
hand and instead of a left hook would follow the straight hard jab with
a mighty right cross which brought down many of his opponents and Johnny
did fight all frightened up inside; never getting accustomed to all the
blood.

Finally Johnny told Leny and his other brother Tommy Tom
Tom who were calling him to another fight - he would no longer be their
"Patsy". No more. No more would he fight to feed greed but this very
night he fought: sending the biggest guy of the three reeling backwards
under the street lights - and not in one of the many dark alleys where
people lay dead for days as cops were afraid to go into such places - where
Johnny chose to stop at the intersection where four gas stations were situated
throwing great heaps of lights out to attract "addicted motorists" looking
for a gas fix after negotiating fifteen green traffic lights by going a
steady thirty miles an hour in his brand new convertible Spring-time yellow
Mustang, and Johnny turned to the little man who had urged a bad beating
on the "honk" and said: "You would have been the one to stab me in the
back if we were in an alley."

The little guy nodded wearing the same hateful face that
people wore while lynching Blacks where apartheid began ....

For a long time, Johnny would have a recurring dream:
walking in a very deep darkness on a street while pushing a gurney full
of innocent people, who had been sacrificed in the pseudo notion of making
a better safer world for everyone that had the elite hiding in "Cheeeny"
bunkers while blood was making rivers above their ducking cowering heads,
toward intersections; watching for traffic lights to see if they remained
green but instead of turning to red would fade into a blackness and yet
he always managed to get over to the other side and just then an African-American
man began walking to his side - whom he could see out of the corner of
his eye - and just as suddenly on his left side appeared an African-American
cop walking along a bank slightly above the sidewalk; coming toward him
were two young American-Black boys smiling happily; similar to the youngsters
he was teaching near Bedford-Stuyvesant; telling them education and the
ability to think was a possible door to getting out of their rat infested
slums; behind them walking slowly with an angry face was another man as
Johnny continued to push forward crossing every intersection whose light
would go from a green to a darkness and when Johnny looked to his left
lying in the burnt brown grass was the severed head of an African-American
.... Johnny always awoke at this point of the dream and would
remember how he arrived at their apartment and his wife asked him how his
day went and he said :"Good! Real good." Then he went into
their fourteen month old son's room and Jon was awake trying to capture
the little dangling figures hovering above his head and Johnny placed his
finger into his son's palm and just after the baby squeezed it tightly
was when Johnny allowed himself to cry softly.

Lorena and the last born Elaina made up the rest of what
would be their family of love.